Green Room

2004 Flashback: Democrats on Mandates

In light of Ed’s post on Axelrod’s rapid reversal, I thought a brief stroll down mandate memory lane might be fun. Remember when this was the Democrats’ mantra, oh, about eight years ago?

Back then, an incumbent president — loathed by the opposing party’s base — had just won re-election, carrying 51 percent of the vote to the challenger’s 48 percent. Sound familiar? Things get downright eerie when you look at the similarities in the raw vote totals (as of today):

Obama 62,156,980
Romney 58,805,060

Bush: 62,040,606
Kerry: 59,028,109

As I noted over at Townhall earlier, if liberals believed President Bush had no governing or ideological mandate after his 2004 victory, they have even less reason to claim one on behalf of Obama:

In 2004, Democrats’ rallying cry was “51 percent isn’t a mandate.” They fought Bush and the Republicans tooth and nail, and ultimately benefited in subsequent elections. Will similar obstinance redound to the GOP’s benefit? Perhaps, although their demographic challenges are serious. Republicans have an even stronger case that Obama has no mandate. Unlike Bush, his vote totals and margins decreased compared to his first election, he didn’t run on any concrete agenda, and voters returned Republicans to a double-digit advantage in the House of Representatives.

Perhaps liberals will rationally consider this evidence and conclude that the logical extension of their own previous standard clearly demonstrates that Obama has no post-2012 mandate. Or perhaps they were whipping themselves into an emotional frenzy of rage and despair in 2004, and couldn’t care less about the details of what they once said.

Blowback

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Comments

If they cared about being consistent maybe they wouldn’t have spent the last 4 year silent while we have a Treasury Secretary who doesn’t know to pay his own damn taxes. Or that Obama tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan while thousands died. All they care about is more power for themselves.

I think you an the other poster reflect something that got swarmed under. In other elections gay marriage,abortion, etc were never enough to carry the election so what happened this time.

What happened this time is the incumbent had no record to run on but a billion dollars to do it anyway. They decided to create some wedge issues and after you spend a billion dollar on gay marriage and abortion and birth control pills you can convince the low information voter those are the burning issues of the day.

That WILL not continue. This only worked because of the first black President and his cult following that wanted his second term to make them look good in electing him to his first.

Hillary Clinton tries to run a birth control pill campaign from the start after 8 years of ignoring the economy there will be a massacre on election day.

The Leftists in the media want you to think this is a blowout 2008 election. It’s not. Obama had to fire up his race first, young skulls full of mush base to win by 3%. You notice no one is talking in the media about where Obama’s 2008 awe inspiring stature has run off to.

Everybody needs to cool their engines and remember the pendulum always swings the other direction. I remember in 1996 we were beseiged by the voter bloc dejour of the “soccer moms”. They loved and trusted Bill Clinton. Therefore they were forever a democrat bloc. Well, those same soccer moms voted for Bush in 2000 by large numbers because they were sick of the Clinton administration.